


Mizpah

by Deviation



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mass Effect 3: Citadel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 13:46:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deviation/pseuds/Deviation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she sees him out of the corner of her eye and she grins in the way that only someone who thrives in battle can because she was not a worker of the shadows the way he was-she was born for this, for war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mizpah

 

 

 

_Tea for Two (A Tragedy)_

_**** _

_It wasn't until after_

_I poured the second cup_

_that I realized_

_I was alone._

_-_

-Pamela August Russell

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she sees him.

 

He moves like liquid shadows, like a hunter on the prowl, and she smiles because that’s what he was in life so of course that’s what he’d be in death. She is fighting geth, she is fighting husks, she is fighting Reapers and there is no time to stop and rest and mourn. There is only the battle, the fight, and occasional shape in the shadows always gone before she can take a good look.

 

She is fighting. It’s not what he wanted for her, she knows, he wanted her to take time for herself, sometimes, to not lose herself to the fight. But she’s lost everything again and again and again-she’s already a broken woman-already was when they first met. The only difference is that now he’s not there to help keep her pieces in place. That is not to say she is not strong. Indeed, there will probably never be another human as strong as she. But strong doesn’t mea faultless, doesn’t mean whole. It means that even when she wants to rage and scream, even when she wants to run away and let the galaxy pick another to be their champion, she gets up, dusts off her armor and leads the galaxy to war.

 

She’s good at that, at war.

 

It was something he had seen that the other’s hadn’t realized until recently. Where he was a silent sentinel, one who creeped in shadows and silence, she was born in war and death and the utter loudness that is war. She embodies war in a way that all great leaders do-in times of peace she could have easily become a great leader, one who all would follow like children to the pied piper-but it is in war that she thrives.

 

You can’t thrive in war without giving up pieces of yourself.

 

 _(If she where a spiritual person, then perhaps she would think that that’s why he died. She needed to be able to thrive on the battlefield, she needed to have nothing left to lose, so the universe took away the last thing she had left and made her stronger for it. The jokes on the universe though because he may be_ gone _but he never_ left _: he creeps in corners of her vision, he is the breath on her neck between waking and sleeping, he is the bullet that strikes from nowhere to take down the beasts at her back. He protects her still._

_She smiles on the battlefield and no one knows why.)_

 

It’s close to the end an everyone knows it. It hung over the heads of the party the way the war does. She felt it choke her throat she felt it fill her lung she knows in the way that old battle scars know that a storm is coming. It’s under her skin, it’s in her blood, this utter terrible knowledge that the end is near. People think that those who thrive in war are excited by it and they would be wrong. She is neither excited by this knowledge nor does she dread it-it is but a part of who she is and is meant to be met with little more the acceptance and defiance and gumption. She is the face that is launching a thousand ships and she is ready for what is coming.

 

The recordings take her by surprise though.

 

Later she’ll laugh at her own foolishness-of course Thane would leave her message, he knew of her fear of forgetting him even if she never said. It was there in ever touch and kiss and spoken word between them. He knew she would lose herself to war, would throw herself fully into war with little thought to her own soul,  so he took his own measures to help her keep her pieces together if only for a little longer. Crying is a bit like releasing dam-she feels both lighter and emptier for it. Exhausted in a way that only love and sorrow can bring.

 

She wants to hold his hand in that awkward way they had to, she wants to listen to his rasping breath and his strong heart, she want to feel his throat vibrate as he laughs into her shoulder, she wants to feel her body flush as he runs his gaze over her again and again-as though he couldn’t recall it perfectly the first time. She wants so much she aches for it as she stares at her ship, her Normandy, her home.

 

At the corner of her eye there is a liquid shadow that prowls like a hunter, watching over her ever vigilant.

 

She doesn’t look but she does smile. She is a woman who thrives in war and to war she will go.

 

 

_"I will be waiting for you at the shore"_

* * *

 

**Mizpah** _(noun)(Hebrew)_ :

The deep emotional bond between people, especially those seperated by death.

**Author's Note:**

> The definition for Mizpah came from Other-wordly on tumblr.


End file.
